How Far We've Come

I love Matchbox Twenty. That's not what this post is about, I'm just throwing that out there. Their first album came out my senior year of high school. It is one of the few albums I can listen to all the way through and like every song. The song 'Push' is still in my top five songs of all time. I know a lot of true music-ies (like foodies? Not sure... I think there is a term for it, but I don't feel like looking it up.) who can't stand them. Oh well. I love music, but I don't pretend to be one of those people who knows all the trivia and band member names and what instruments they used on each album and how far all their songs went on the charts. I work full time and have two kids. My brain doesn't have room for that kind of stuff. I like what I like. Anyway.... I just got the Matchbox Twenty 'Exile on Mainstream' album so I thought titling this post 'How far we've come' was fitting.

My sister and I have started a project to go through all the boxes of old snapshots my mom had in various locations all over her house. We're sorting them out to scan them so we can have copies of them forever (no, I don't know why). Wednesday night, we were having a sort session and our husbands were looking through them too. I must say I was.... pretty scary from the time I was about 11 until I was 15 or so. I had dorky glasses and super long hair. I was skinny and awkward and self-conscious and weird. Total bookworm.... only not the all-she-needs-are-contacts-and-lipgloss-and she'll-be-prom-queen kind of bookworm. No... the serious socially-awkward-no-amount-of-makeover-can-cure-and-we-pray-she-grows-out-of-it kind of bookworm. My husband spent the evening teasing me mercilessly for this. I lost count of the number of times he said something like "Wow. You were just so weird looking! Not good, Babe." For the most part I don't really care, but I think that when I'm in a situation where I already feel self-conscious I see myself as that person in my mind instead of the moderately more presentable and socially-integrated (but still weird and awkward) person I am today.
Today I feel like I sort of had an eye-opening experience. I had a meeting with a director in our company to review a problem report I'd been frantically working all day to put together. He was questioning my work and that awkward 14 year old reared her ugly head. I looked down at the retro-mod dress and heels I was wearing, thought about all the work and research I'd put into the report, and answered his question with complete confidence in my answer.... despite that I knew it was completely contradictory to what he wanted to hear. I braced myself for a barrage of questions, but he just said 'okay' and moved to the next item.
Confidence.... so elusive and yet so liberating!